The Antichristian Phenomenon

художник на икониSo, yesterday I received this email:

Hi,

My name is Cindy and I’m the owner of ChristianDatingSites.net–would you take a look at my site and consider possibly listing it as a resource on your website?

ChristianDatingSites.net is the only website exclusively devoted to Christian singles who want reliable information about avoiding the financial and physical dangers inherent in using online dating, serving our readers by authoring articles on topics like how to identify dating site scams and how to deal with one if you fall victim.

Please take a look at ChristianDatingSites.net, and if you agree that it’s a valuable resource, perhaps consider adding a link to it from your site?

Thank you in advance for your consideration,

Cindy McDonald
Blogger | Owner

Cindy, my dear, consider your wish granted. We, the devoted antichristians of the net would love to endorse ChristianDatingSites.net wholheartedly. All Antichristians should consider this as their first stop if they ever consider christian dating given the recently converted nature of its owner:  Cindy the Antichristian. Welcome to enlightenment my sister.

I know, I know, it might come as something of a shock to the previous audience of ChristianDatingSites.net, but such are the realities when one finally wakes up to the nonsense of the Christian belief system. I’m sure Cindy’s recent deconvertion will not affect her professional conduct in her role as webmaster and that is certainly shown by her rational choice to contact The Antichristian Phenomenon to list her as a valuable resource.

We hear and we acknowledge Cindy! Of course, we do not expect that you link immediately back to the ACP, as that might alienate your readers, but I’m sure you have plans to slowly spread more and more antichristianity and when the time comes, a proper link back to us will be provided. Until then, feel free to copy some of our texts for covert dissemination to your audience. Wink,wink.

For all our christian readers out there, you can now see they the ACP is the top religious blog on the net, when even Christians reach out to us for endorsements.

Tell your friends.

мека мебелA repost from reddit, in a fail-proof reply to those Theists that love to bring up how they “used to be an atheist when I was young too”.

Hebrews 6:4-8

“It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.”

100% of the time, I hear back. “I didn’t know that. Well, I don’t believe that part.” So, of course my response is, “We’re in agreement then; I don’t believe the part that says I’m going to Hell either.”

I’ve never seen someone recover. Enjoy!

Now go forth and pwn.

Ever since Last.fm sold out to corporate interests I was expecting the day would come when the many anti-religion groups that existed there were taken down to avoid offending the sensibilities of the increasing pop audience. Well it seems that happened while I was not looking as the first thing I heard about it is this post from Anath in the forum. Apparently the last.fm admins purged many of the existing anti-religion groups with the reasoning that they were promoting “hatred” but fortunately spared the ACP which was seen of keeping things more civil. This message was sent to Anath:

Hi,

As you might have heard, some anti-religion groups have been deleted recently. I have been looking at your group as well, and a few things are beyond what I would normally authorise, but most of the contents are discussion orientated and not just plain bashing and hatred. This is the reason why I am not deleting this group. But I strongly encourage you to keep a strong moderation going, so it does not become mindless hatred.

As an example, “Metal against Islamism group was deleted… BASTARDS!” and “Oh good grief. Stupid bastards, creating a mass of groups for exactly the same thing. That’s just confusing.” are the kind of things I would rather not want to see appearing.

In this thread various opinions were heard, some coming from the Metal against Islamism admins who tried to explain that they had no warning and no chance to fix things before being deleted. The admins of Last.fm also chimed in to explain that they would simply prefer to avoid rampart hatred but have no problem with reasoned arguments. Apparently one of the main reasons why MAI was deleted was their shoutbox was flooded with seething anti-Islam posts, far too many to delete individually. So the whole thing had to be taken down. It reminds of how the Protoss used to clean the Zerg infestations in the popular Starcraft^[I] PC game.

The ironic thing is that the reason the ACP group was spared was the strong moderation we were seen of having which prevented a lot of the most questionable stuff. This moderation, which takes the form of requiring people to join the group before posting in the forum or shoutbox, was implemented in fact to prevent Christian trolling as we would often get fly-by posts and shouts from people who only wanted to disrupt. They would spam the forum with dozens of pro-christian nonsense for example and then leave before being banned, making it impossible to stop them.

The interesting thing is that all this purging has given a very strong boost in activity to the ACP as it has now become a haven for all those people left groupless in the anti-religion department. Hopefully this will make for a healthier and more active anti-christian community that does not devolve into a circle-jerk of mindless christian bashing.

It also points out the benefits of having an external website complementing your last.fm forum such as the one you’re currently reading. In case the ACP had been taken down, we would still be able to use this area for a staging area until we found a new home, either under a new name or a new forum.

As for Last.fm, unfrtunately it seems to be taking more and more of the corporate route. One can only hope that they won’t go to the extent that Microsoft has for example when they started banning all mention of homosexuality in their allowed usernames. One can only hope that if “hateful” anti-religion groups have been deleted, the same has been done to the hateful religious, fascist and racist groups but I have no knowledge of this either way.

Footnotes

1. I was thinking of linkin to a wikipedia article of this but then I thought: Seriously, if you don’t know what Starcraft is, you’re probably too old for this site anyway [↩]

In an editorial column, guest columnist Byron R. McCane explored why the ‘new atheism’ in America has not taken off as people might have suspected. The important and famous new atheist books like The God Delusion (Dawkins), raman amplifierGod is Not Great (Hitchens) and Breaking the Spell (Dennett) have fallen from the charts, and no new new atheism books are out there at the moment. McCane thinks the new atheism failed because even though 15% of Americans are not religiously affiliated, they are still spiritual or ‘between religions’, as surveys have shown. He makes a few points that I would like to address.

First of all, McCane assumes that the goal of these new atheist books is to convince Americans to there is no God. As far as I’m concerned, only Dawkins’ book does that. Dawkins argues that there the idea that a God exists is not supported by evidence at all, and that therefore this belief is a delusion. Hitchens writes about religion and not god in particular; he argues that religion has bad influence on the world. Where he does mention God is mostly to criticize this God’s behaviour as being immoral (this is particularly true for the Old Testament God.) Dennett did not write about God at all in his book, and simply argued that religion should be studied in a scientific framework, as opposed to it being off-limits to science.

And even though Dawkins does argue against the existence of a supernatural creator, I think he is well aware he is no going to convince anybody who is firmly rooted in the belief that this being does exist. The title of his book suggests an entirely different audience – people who have serious doubts about this particular belief, or are already atheists but who have never examined this belief philosophically or scientifically. Or perhaps it was written to provide those closet atheists who live in a community of theists some ammunition to come out. Nor should one see Dawkins’ book merely as a reason why one should not believe in a god, but also why one would not believe in a god.

Secondly, McCane suggests the new atheism failed because Americans will not be swayed about religion by logic and science. He cites that a survey showed that only 2% of people say logic and science play a role in their choice of religion. He says Americans are pragmatic about their religion, as most go through a series of religious affiliations in a lifetime as spiritual seekers. There is a duality I feel about this percentage. Two important aspects about religion is that it provides a moral code and that it provides ideas about the universe. On one side, I think it is sad that only two percent of people care enough about logic, science and reason to use it in determining what religion offers the most accurate ideas about the universe. On the other side, I am glad that only two percent thinks their religion is supported by logic, science and reason, because I feel they often oppose these religious ideas.

More importantly, it is important to realize that you can’t convince somebody who doesn’t accept the epistemic value of logic (and indirectly, science) about anything. It is the same as talking to a brick wall. No argument and no fact bears any weight any more. There is a symmetry here with “us atheists” who are confronted by theists who will make claims based on their particular holy book. Because we do not accept these books as infallible, we must investigate those claims on more than their souce. The difference is that people who still use logic, have more to go on than the inerrant authority of whichever book or person. People who do not believe in an afterlife can not be scared into submission by threats of hell, and people who do not accept logic can not be persuaded by any argument, no matter how sound the argument is. In the mindset of those 98%, any book that disputes their particular religious beliefs is best ignored. No wonder it doesn’t work for them.

Thirdly the new atheism failure is said to be due to it being intolerant of religion, which clashes with the now widely held value of religious tolerance. I am willing to concede the point that the new atheism is perceived that way, but I dispute the fact that it is really as intolerant as people might think. Religion, like politics, is one of those subjects people have decided talking about during dinner is not done. Not only is it a subject that people might disagree over fervently without getting anywhere (remember the 98%), it is also considered sacred or holy. Vocal and written opposition to deeply held religious beliefs can easily be hurtful, especially when the conclusion to such opposition is that you are delusional. On the other hand, these conclusions were not reached as a goal to attack religious people. These are conclusions reached through arguments, and remembering the poll, only 2% of all religious people have reason to be offended by such conclusions in the first place.

The new atheism is more about bringing atheism out of the closet as an acceptable position, and to bring religion down from it’s uncritiqueable pedestal and into serious inquiry -  which is the only thing Dennett is arguing for. Toes will be stepped on, and people will be offended – not only by words as delusional, but by secular and atheist ideas in itself alone – but that should not stand in the way of intellectual discourse. In conclusion: I do not think the new atheism has failed at all.  By putting arguments for atheism and against religion out there, in it has helped making atheism and scepticism a valid position. The books are interesting in themselves for their ideas and arguments, and make up for a modern addition to a historical plethora of written material on the subject of religion.

It seems that its Wednesday again! I hardly noticed the week pass… here is another installment. Beware, from this point on, posts are Epic in length.

If you would like to read the debate for yourself directly on Amazon you can go to his review here. The content I am posting starts on page 3.
If you’re new to this series, here’s The Prelude, Part 1, and Part 2. (more…)

Quick note: Scott Pruett has started answering the initial refutations to his 10 questions and in his latest post he has started including answers from the ACP. Unfortunately I’m on vacation at the moment and can’t answer but feel free to take a shot at it.

Very shortly: This time he is tackling the answers to the ‘Order’ question. Unfortunately his answers can be simply surmised as him falling back onto his ‘Creation’ question. He turned the question from “How can the universe be finely tuned to human life” to “Why have a universe that can sustain any kind of life rather than no life” this is aking to saying “Why is there a universe”.

And my answer to that question is the same as before.

(h/t FaithlessGod)

I preserved this thread on my personal blog, but I figure the visitors here would be more interested, since I don’t even attempt to generate traffic there.  I’ve also modified it into a single post.  Now that the fireworks have died down and the Creationist ran away officially, I would say the debate is officially over, and quite post-worthy.

A silly “All-Access Customer” was harassing Cleric on his Expelled review (which he also posted on the ACP), and putting forth statements he couldn’t answer, so I was called in for damage control.  If you want to read the original source, my first post is on page 27, All-Access’s comments start somewhere around 20, his complete idiocy is exposed on page 26, but I have condensed the posts here and edited basically nothing. (I may have fixed a few typos and names?)  I left out posts that weren’t by myself, Cleric, or All-Access as they did not contribute to the debate.  If you want to read them, the link is above…

All-Access got confused and a bit angry at my blatant exposure of his logical fallacies, then I smacked him around with some science and he disappeared for over a month, claiming he was “sleep deprived” and couldn’t think about it yet.  When he came back, he complained again that he was sleep deprived and continued to ignore my post.  It seems that most Creationists/ID proponents can not seem to argue outside those tired boxes already set up for them.

Warning: some of the responses are MASSIVE, and there is not much logic to be found.  Overall, it is a pretty typical debate with a supporter of ID.  Also, if you see that I have made a mistake or provided mis-information anywhere, please let me know so I do not repeat it next time.

(more…)

Just a stupid thought I had right now, I blame the time of the day, or rather morning and my refusal to go to sleep. Anyway, I don’t want to sound deep, smart, or anything, just this very short article about a thought I had just now. Just that isn’t it highly ironical that Christians always go and threaten every other non-Christian as being damned in hell for eternity if we don’t believe in their god and follow their scripture? Not for the sake that we don’t believe in their hell to begin with, I know, the argument is tired and worn out already.

I have a better one, merely that if we have never known god, how can hell be anything but bad for us if hell means the “absence of god”? I mean, how can you miss something of which you never had and never been exposed to in your life? (Well, some have, but rejected it anyway so I guess it would be a relief for them too.) Nevermind the hellfire thing, it has never been proven anyway and just says “fire and brimstone” in the original, but I guess I wouldn’t mind some warmth. Rather that than freezing aye? Oh yes, I hate winter…

I r redi 2 dai!

I’ve recently been getting a lot of people calling me on my cell phone who spoof their numbers.  In the fall, I had some Christian Video organization prank calling me 3 times a day for weeks.  No one answered when I picked up the phone, so there was no way to complain, the only way I found out what was going on was by Googling the number.

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Like many others, the ACP has recently joined scoutle in order to test it’s promise. At the moment the Atheosphere is embracing the service which is cool. The Atheists Network from 1 person jumped to 20

Recently I’ve been checking the Antichristian Scout and I noticed that scoutle has ranked us as deserved.

Muahahahahaaaa!

The only thing missing is to somehow lock us at this number >:D

Silliness aside, I’m quite glad at how this thing is progressing. This kind of automation will certainly allow uis to discover the sites that are interedting to each other without even trying. I’ve already discovered at least 5 blogs that I’ve never even seen.